35 Days Against DRM -- Day 9: Zune

For their submissions. If you haven't yet begun working on your
submission yet, you still have a little while to get it in, but don't
delay or your chosen subject may already be written about.

We're also looking for a list of games that use SecuROM -- get in contact with those.

Today, we're promoting upcoming events in Boston, reaching out to
groups to create their own events, and bringing you a short DRM-story.

Act 1 -- Anti-DRM actions in your town!

On Friday, we brought you the early news on our plans for physical
protests against DRM. From December 10th until December 24th, staff,
members and friends of Defective by Design will be at the Borders
bookstore on School St in Downtown Boston, protesting the sale of
DRM-laden products, from Blu-Ray DVDs and iTunes Gift Cards to the
Sony Reader (aka the Shredder) and iPod -- join us at 1pm this
Wednesday!

Act 2 -- Zune: The DRM Bait and Switch from Microsoft

by Trista Wallebeck

This item is laden with DRM in order for Microsoft to be able to
proclaim it as "music industry friendly" when it is completely
user-unfriendly.

This device allows you to send your music (over a proprietary wireless
format) to another Zune user. The song sent is then playable for
either 3 days or 3 plays, whichever comes first. Then, perhaps most
odiously of all, once the song has "expired" it sits there in your
music list grayed out... taunting you. Microsoft claims this is to
"remind you" of the song information should you want to purchase it in
the future.

Everything with this device is proprietary and locked down according
to what Microsoft says you should be able to do, and allows nothing
else.